cian comes out as much
a metaphysician as an accomplished analyst.

"Do you understand them?" said Emilio to Vendramin as they left the cafe
at two in the morning.

"Yes, my dear boy," said Vendramin, taking Emilio home with him. "Those
two men are of the legion of unearthly spirits to whom it is given here
below to escape from the wrappings of the flesh, who can fly on the
shoulders of the queen of witchcraft up to the blue empyrean where the
sublime marvels are wrought of the intellectual life; they, by the power
of art, can soar whither your immense love carries you, whither opium
transports me. Then none can understand them but those who are like
them.

"I, who can inspire my soul by such base means, who can pack a hundred
years of life into a single night, I can understand those lofty spirits
when they talk of that glorious land, deemed a realm of chimeras by
some who think themselves wise; but the realm of reality to us whom
they think mad. Well, the Duke and Capraja, who were acquainted at
Naples,--where Cataneo was born,--are mad about music."

"But what is that strange system that Capraja was eager to explain to
the Duke? Did you understand?"

"Yes," replied Vendramin. "Capraja's great friend is a musician from
Cremona, lodging in the Capello palace, who has a theory that sounds
meet with an element in man, analogous to that which produces ideas.
According to him, man has within him keys acted on by sound, and
corresponding to his nerve-centres, where ideas and sensations take
their rise. Capraja, who regards the arts as an assemblage of means by
which he can harmonize, in himself, all external nature with another
mysterious nature that he calls the inner life, shares all ideas of this
instrument-maker, who at this moment is composing an opera.

"Conceive of a sublime creation, wherein the marvels of the visible
universe are reproduced with immeasurable grandeur, lightness,
swiftness, and extension; wherein sensation is infinite, and whither
certain privileged natures, possessed of divine powers, are able to
penetrate, and you will have some notion of the ecstatic joys of which
Cataneo and Capraja were speaking; both poets, each for himself alone.
Only, in matters of the intellect, as soon as a man can rise above the
sphere where plastic art is produced by a process of imitation, and
enter into that transcendental sphere of abstractions where everything
is understood as an elementary principle, and seen